CV News/ Sunday, May 12, 2019
The “Time” magazine, which is making headlines for calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi “divider in chief”, is surprisingly soft on the Congress for the party’s alleged participation in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Pointing out that the country has “a long history of politically instigated sectarian riots, most notably the killing of at least 2,733 Sikhs in the streets of Delhi after the 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards”, the top journal states, “The Congress leadership, though hardly blameless, was able, even through the selective profession of secular ideals, to separate itself from the actions of the mob.”
On the other hand, according to “Time”, “Modi, by his deafening silences after more recent atrocities, such as the killing of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, proved himself a friend of the mob.”
The weekly states, Modi “made one yearn for the hypocrisies of the past, for, as Aldous Huxley writes, at least ‘the political hypocrite admits the existence of values higher than those of immediate national, party or economic interest’.”
“Modi”, it adds, “Without offering an alternative moral compass, rubbished the standards India had, and made all moral judgment seem subject to conditions of class and culture warfare.”